7-14-2011 Quick Read List

House Dems introduce spectrum bill – House Democrats have introduced a wireless spectrum bill H.R. 2482 which is similar to a recently proposed Senate bill. A key difference is that the House bill contains explicit protections for the TV broadcasters even though they are wasting a few hundred MHz of spectrum that could be reclaimed while delivering the same free TV service. The bill also calls for the creation of a separate wireless network for public safety which requires constructing billions of dollars of redundant infrastructure. Richard Bennett explained why Public Safety networks really aren’t so special and why the government network could be better served with existing and new commercial wireless infrastructure.

A Call to Take Back the Internet From Corporations – New America Foundation’s Rebecca MacKinnon is not happy about Apple’s App Store policies and Amazon’s Web server provisioning restrictions and she tells the New York Times that regulations alone aren’t enough.

60% Price Hike for Netflix– The public has been whipped into a frenzy over a massive price hike from Netflix. The CEO of Netflix argues that the purpose of the price hike is to get people to stop using DVDs because it was costing them $700 million in postage fees. The $1 postage for heavy DVD customers is a money loser, but they’re subsidized by people (like me) who pay for the DVD rental service but rarely use it.

As smartphones proliferate, some users are cutting the computer cord – Some very interesting research from Pew indicates that some wireless Internet smartphone customers are ditching or bypassing wired broadband services. We can add wired broadband cannibalization to the list of of victims, which already include the portable game console, the smartphone, the point-and-shoot camera,and the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).